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Odds and EndsThree notable bits of news today:
Ian Montgomery at Thepunkeffect.com has a nice piece on the recent RiffTrax Live show. Sherilyn Connelly has a piece in The Village Voice that essentially summarizes what you’ll hear when you watch the documentary about the making of “MST3K: The Movie” that’s on the new Blu-ray/DVD from Shout!, and offers some comments and personal reflections. A number of episodes have returned to Netflix Instant. Enjoy. 26 Replies to “Odds and Ends”Commenting at Satellite News
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All content posted on Satellite News is copyright © 2024 by Chris Cornell and Brian Henry, except where otherwise noted. This Date in MSTory is written and compiled by Steve Finley, Chris Cornell and Brian Henry. Copyright © 2024 All rights reserved. Please do not reproduce This Date in MSTory items in any form without express written permission from the authors. Items of MST3K news may be duplicated or reposted, as long as Satellite News is cited as the source. The views and opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of Satellite of Love, LLC. No warranty is expressed or implied that the information given herein is completely accurate, and in fact this information can and will change at any time. So there. Mystery Science Theater 3000, its characters and situations are copyrights and trademarks of Satellite of Love, LLC. Banner image created by Larry Lee Moniz. |
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I assume the Netflix episodes will probably be the ones that just disappeared from Amazon Prime and the game of ping-pong will continue, but I’ll take what I can (streamingly) get.
Great article from Sherilyn Connelly! Although, I must admit that This Island Earth was the “gateway drug” that got me hooked on the tv meth that is the show, so it must have some value despite being lesser MST.
And I didn’t know they actually recorded anything at Prince’s Paisley Park. I guess what happens in Prince World really does stay in Prince World. Also, I wonder if Prince has ever watched “Agent for H.A.R.M” or “Catalina Caper.”
Michael J. Nelson…..Prince Rogers Nelson….no relation.
:-))
Someday the tait of Hollywood will fade and people can just enjoy “The Movie” as it turned out – flaws and all. The riffs are just too good to ignore. It should always be looked on proudly by the writers and performers.
Being the completist that I am, I’ll buy Shout! Factory’s Blu-Ray of the movie, I agree with Sherilyn Connelly’s article. MST3K: The Movie is just not all that good. There’s good reason for it, though and do look forward to seeing the documentary about the movie.
And also, not Joe Dante too! He parodied his own Gremlins movie, via Gremlins 2, for crying out loud! He even had Leonard Matlin appear in it, a man who hated the first one! How is it that he doesn’t have a sense of humor regarding movies?
For those who don’t want to click away and search, here’s what I see on Netflix instant:
– The Movie (This Island Earth)
– The Final Sacrifice
– The Touch Of Satan
– Soultaker
– Pod People
– Gamera
Chris@5
It’s a nice assortment of episodes. Nowhere near the variety they had prior to the rights lull for the past 6+ months with no episodes. GAMERA is definitely new to the mix.
Using Amazon Instant recently, I saw that they have 25 episodes listed for Prime Instant Video viewing. The vast majority list “Studio” as “Shout! Factory. Which I think is cool for some reason.
It’s still strange to me though that Shout! licensed a number of episodes for iTunes store, YouTube store, Amazon Prime, et al that they have not done Shout! Select releases of.
Perhaps they are just waiting for the right time to release those old Rhino OOP’s on DVD. Sorry, going off topic as usual.
Not to sound churlish or ungrateful, but is there any chance that Shout might be able to add a few more to Netflix Instant any time soon?
(I just like having them there to choose from.)
#4 According to an interview that DVD Verdict did with Kevin a while back, Joe Dante was a fan of the show until they did Marooned, which he thought was too good of a movie.
“Actually, no. I think we were sufficiently harsh on a lot of the films we did. We had one film where somebody took us to task …we had heard back, second hand, that Joe Dante, who was a fan of our show, got really angry because we did the movie Marooned, which fell into PD [public domain] for a short while, so we were able to get our mitts on it. I guess that was a very influential and important film in his career or something like that and, you know, poor guy he was just simply wrong. It was perfect for us, and it was probably the biggest celebrity film that we got our mitts on at the time. I was very happy to do it.”
I disagree that it was perfect for them. It’s a bunch of famous actors… standing around talking. Woohoo.
For those interested…
Here is what is available on Amazon Instant (Prime):
– The Final Sacrifice
– Pod People
– Zombie Nightmare
– Werewolf
– King Dinosaur
– Laserblast
– Eegah
– Santa Claus
– Horrors of Spider Island
– First Spaceship on Venus
– Bride of the Monster
– Future War
– Cave Dwellers
– Devil Fish
– Devil Doll
– The Crawling Eye
– Hercules Against the Moon Men
– Code Name: Diamond Head
– Lost Continent
– Crash of the Moons
– Indestructible Man
– The Beast of Yucca Flats
– The Phantom Planet
– The Wild World of Batwoman
– Manos
Thanks for the news. Here are some more odds and ends.
Rifftrax is doing a poll and soliciting fan feedback because of the sound issues at last week’s live show. They are hoping to be able to do a better mix of movie sound vs. Rifftrax so it is easier to hear the jokes over the movies cacophonous soundtrack at the encore showing on Sept. 12.
Rifftrax Live Night Of The Living Dead tickets go on sale August 30. The show is Oct. 24.
MST3K 25th Anniversary DVD set due for release in late November is already available for advance order at some online sites.
Good article, though I left a post reminding the author of BBI’s revenge via the host segments for “Incredible Melting Man”.
@2 (Scruffy the Pet Lion)
You also wonder if he ever got around to reading “Death Rat”.
Well, the Village Voice article reiterates the spurious argument that somehow This Island Earth is too good a movie for MST. It might have been PERCEIVED that way, sure, but most likely by people who had never seen This Island Earth in its entirety. I have. It’s no great shakes. I would also disagree that the cuts did TIE a great disservice. TIE is not much more coherent in its full run time over the MST cut.
That said, TIE is a FUN movie. It’s a great choice for MST. Big, colorful, pretty dumb, plus the three leads are all personal faves of mine.
This Island Earth was a perfect movie for MST3k and anyone who thinks it’s a genuinely good film hasn’t seen it since they were in elementary school. Why they cut anything from TIE I don’t know, but I watched it uncut fairly recently and it’s still complete crap. There’s nothing more to the plot than what we got get in MST3k TM. It makes no sense and what little fun there is gets buried under a world peace message that never gets off the runway. Calling This Island Earth a classic just because it was expensive and looked nice is like people calling Avatar a classic 50 years from now.
I’m inclined to believe there’s something to the theory that critics are thinking of some other movie, maybe The Day The Earth Stood Still. (The real one; not that utter travesty remake with Keanu…)
Anyhoo… sure, MST3k TM has some problems, but they’re all understandable: the studio made them write to please a wider audience (always a mistake); they spaced the riffs out to leave room for theaters full of laughter
Leaving space for laughter seems likes hubris in hindsight, but it does make sense. Think of the “he asked me to marry him” scene in Some Like It Hot. Emulating Billy Wilder is never a bad idea, but the end result does feel a lot like MST3k Lite.
The biggest problem with the movie, in my humble opinion is that they take too long to start with the yuk yuks. The intro with Dr F explaining the premise is good, but then they spans way too long establishing Mike, Crow, and Tom’s characters when that’s really not important. I would cut the entire tunnelling out of the satellite scene and get them into the theater as quickly as possible. It would be a perfect introduction for newbies if they didn’t waste all that time.
Like I said on Facebook,this is what happens when the studio heads get involved and focus groups who have no idea what they’re doing.They should’ve let the writers and performers of MST3K do their job and not interfere.That being said,MST3K:TM isn’t a decent effort,but could’ve been a lot better,if only the studio stayed out of it..Paul Chaplin even said that he wishes they would’ve released Manos instead..Looking forward to buying it when it comes out on blu-ray and seeing the extras..
For me personally,I wished they would’ve used the theme song at the beginning with a bouncing Crow head hopping onto each word.Would get the audience to sing along..Second,find a movie that is pretty bad and maybe have a short,depending on the length of the movie..
Great article,by the way…
The article said there’s not much reason for MST3K TM to exist.
Oh, I disagree.
Not liking the movie as a blue-blooded MYSTIE is one thing; denial of the film’s right to exist is quite another.
If taking on the project is ultimately the catalyst that led to Joel leaving and Mike pulling host, then the film’s existence is justified from that single fact alone.
I’m one of those fans who likes both Joel and Mike, therefore I cannot imagine MST3K any other way. (those who prefer “Joel only” do have exquisitely solid footing regarding wishing they could play Terminator and go back in time and somehow stop the film project from ever getting seriously considered by anyone at Best Brains.)
The style of the article was too flippantly authoritative, but that’s my opinion.
I also fall into the camp that thinks TIE was pretty much a waste of celluloid and perfect for riffing. The production values make it easy to watch, too. But the acting? I believe I saw as good or better acting in Revenge of the Creature when a fish happened to look in the camera and emote via weepy brine.
MST3K TM exceeds some of the television episodes, so it certainly isn’t as terrible as the article pans it out to be. It’s just not what was expected or hoped for by x amount of fans. By the end of the article, I got the feeling you’re not supposed to be interested unless you’re just buying the DVD to see the bonus features.
But most fans can wedge this new Blu ray DVD into their reality with no problem whatsoever. (subliminal: They can and they will. They can and they will.)
One thing everyone seems to agree on is that the project was contaminated – resulting in a lesser creation, a weaker version of what could have been.
You would THINK that studio execs would be SMART ENOUGH to know WHEN to not interfere with a project and to simply trust the very people they are using. It’s such an age old problem and yet it is repeated.
It’s worse now. Everything is “focus grouped” to the nth degree, resulting in homogenized sputum.
Control freaks.
Reminds me of FOX’s insistent attempts to contaminate Futurama.
If there is ever another MST3K TM, we’ll make sure Rick Rubin is at the helm and he will bring out the very best of the beast.
Wow. I went a little long here. I’ve been trying to not do that, as I am such a newb.
TGIF. That’s alllllllllll folks!
When something happens in your lifetime, you might have fond memories of it. I think that’s why a bunch of old guys love This Island Earth. If you had to watch black and white monster and sci-fi movies, most of them cheap atomic monster fare, you might see a full color movie like This Island Earth as a godsend.
In my opinion, of the few big budget sci-fi movies from that time, Forbidden Planet is the only one that holds up. While it’s still of its time, the fully alien setting, the visual & special effects, the costumes and sets still look good.
Joe Dante hates MST3K?!!!!
Well, I lost a little bit of respect for him….
Kevin Murphy also talked about how Dennis Miller stopped liking MST3K after they did Marooned.
Come on! That movie’s not THAT great.
I think it’s funny that we in the MST3K fan community view the movie as a lesser “experiment”, yet I know lots of fans who cite it as their first exposure to the series & absolutely love it for that reason. For a lot of people, this was their one & only way to view MST3K until Netflix & YouTube came along, primarily because nearly every video store in North America carried it thanks to the wide reach of Universal’s home video distribution (Fun aside: I had a friend in high school who worked at a video store & would play it over their in-store monitors once a week. He said that more often than not all 5 of their copies would be rented out by the time it was over. It proved so popular that his store started carrying some of the episodes Rhino released on VHS). Yes, it didn’t turn out exactly how we / the Brains wanted it to, it was dumped into theaters & they never got the chance to make another one, but I have honestly met too many fans who told me they first checked out MST3K by renting the movie at their local video store to think that it wasn’t ultimately worthwhile in the end. And at the very least, you gotta admit it wasn’t the dreadful debacle that the Mr. Show movie was… now there’s a group of talented comedians who REALLY got screwed by their studio.
I only caught the very end odd the Comedy Central era, mostly the reruns, so the movie was important to me. Years later, after having seen many hilarious episodes of the series, I just don’t find the movie all that funny. The host segments are weak and Dr. Forrester is just no fun by himself. As we all know, there were problems with the movies production, but looked at objectively, the movie is lightweight.
@20 – I wouldn’t place the movie among my top 25 episodes, or even my top 50 for that matter, but at this point I’ve seen every episode & love & understand the subtleties & nuances of the Brains specific type of humor that mostly got sanded off by the Universal execs. I understand us hardcore MSTies not thinking it’s among the greatest episodes in the series, but I think it did have value in introducing people to MST3K who otherwise wouldn’t have known about it at that point. It’s certainly not bad, but it is “lightweight”, as you say, for those of us craving more out-there riffs / esoteric references / punishingly bad films.
@ 17 “In my opinion, of the few big budget sci-fi movies from that time, Forbidden Planet is the only one that holds up.”
I am not well versed enough to know if it is the only one that holds up, but I agree with you 100% that Forbidden Planet still meets the highest standards, and I believe, always will. (until our planet is destroyed by microbes, pollution, death of the sun, etc etc.)
A truly astonishing film. To see it for the first time as a kid one late night was mind blowing.
At this point, I could confess to the difficulties and complexity of being sexually imprinted by Anne Francis and a backdrop of space ships, robots, and monsters from the id, but I will spare everyone the sordid details.
Let’s just say that an ideal date would be with an Anne Francis lookalike at a costume party dressed as she was in the film and I would dress like Robby the Robot.
Hey Luther, I get the feeling you might appreciate this mash-up T-shirt:
http://shirt.woot.com/offers/forbidden-future
Goshzilla,
That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout!
I could wear that shirt to sci-fi conventions AND robo-catholic confession time.
Joe Dante?…I thought he was dead!
@25 No, you’re thinking of Snake Plissken. ;)
I suspect Joe is a little defensive, as TIE was in his 1985 film “Explorers”, as were some other movies that eventually became MST episodes. It was also in “It Came From Hollywood” from 1981, which is like proto MST in places.
Mr. Dante isn’t above making fun of cheesy sci fi flicks though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i68bV4XgtmE
When is Rifftrax going to do Barb Wire, and get some sweet revenge?